Survivor: Immigrants in trailer screamed for help

Survivor describes terror in trailerImmigrants' cries for help at checkpoint went unheard, he says

Published 6:30 am, Thursday, March 10, 2005

The illegal immigrants locked in Tyrone Williams' overheated trailer were so desperate to escape that they screamed for help as the truck stopped at a South Texas immigration checkpoint, a survivor of the fatal smuggling attempt testified Wednesday.

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Williams finally abandoned the trailer at a truck stop in Victoria on May 14, 2003. Authorities found 17 bodies inside it and two more riders died later.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, saying Williams ignored the victims' cries and their pounding on the trailer walls. Defense attorney Craig Washington says Williams, 34, is guilty of smuggling but did not cause the deaths.

The riders had been loaded into the trailer near Harlingen on May 13. Medina said conditions quickly became severe and some people broke out the trailer's running lights and took turns putting their faces near the holes to breathe. They pushed their clothes out the holes to draw attention.

"We were putting our hands out through the openings of the lights," Medina said. "We were throwing our shoes and shirts through the holes from the lights. We were hitting the walls of the truck and we were screaming loudly."

Jurors on Tuesday had viewed a security videotape showing the truck as it passed through the checkpoint. Although spectators could not see the video, a Border Patrol agent testified as he viewed it that one of the running lights could be seen dangling from the trailer.

Medina insisted that those inside were screaming to attract attention, but survivors who testified in last year's trial of three others involved in the incident said they were silent at the checkpoint.

Medina also told of making desperate 911 calls on his cell phone from inside the trailer.

"Ayuda! Ayuda!" he shouted in Spanish from the witness stand when asked by a prosecutor to duplicate how he called for help.

In a tape of one of the calls, a child can be heard crying. The dispatcher asks in Spanish where Medina is and he says he is in a trailer north of Harlingen. The line then goes dead.

On another tape, the dispatcher repeatedly asks for the caller's address. The line then goes silent and the dispatcher says "Hello" three times, but gets no reply.

Through a translator, Medina told jurors that people in the trailer were dying around him. Asked by prosecutors how he knew people were dying, he said: "You could hear it. You could feel it."

The truck stopped at least twice after passing the checkpoint, Medina said, and he got out when the doors were opened at the last stop.

He said he saw two bodies before he and several other survivors ran toward a stable. Hours later, he was arrested and questioned by agents.

Jurors also saw a security video from the Speedy Stop truck stop in Victoria, where Williams opened the trailer doors. It shows him and his traveling companion, Fatima Holloway, buying dozens of bottles of water.

As Holloway makes a final purchase, a shirtless Salvadoran man bursts into the store, screaming in Spanish that someone is trying to kill him.

"I remember it being extremely hot and that I could feel it through my glove," when touching the bodies, she said.

Fourteen people were indicted in connection with the botched smuggling attempt, which U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby has called the deadliest in U.S. history. Williams is the only defendant who could receive a death sentence if convicted.